1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a tomosynthesis apparatus of the type having a compression plate and a support plate.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A tomosynthesis is an examination of the breast (in particular the female breast) that is conducted with the goal of detecting tumors in as early a stage as possible. Through continuous improvement of the imaging methods it is sought to generate images with high significance in order to be able to differentiate benign variations from malignant variations with high certainty. One goal in the improvement of the imaging methods is to reduce the number of erroneous findings, i.e. the number of suspected findings that are not caused by malignant variations and the number of undetected tumors.
During the tomosynthesis the breast is positioned between a support plate and a compression plate in a tomosynthesis apparatus, and is compressed. The breast is subsequently irradiated from different directions with x-rays emitted by an x-ray source, so the individual projections forming a tomosynthesis image data set are acquired. A tomosynthetic 3D x-ray image is calculated in a known manner from these projections using a reconstruction algorithm.
In tomosynthesis examinations it has been observed on different occasions that the breast was not completely imaged. In other words, in some cases it was not possible to generate a complete tomosynthesis 3D x-ray image of the entire breast in the reconstruction.